


but if we're good, and if we wait

by Cirkne



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Getting Together, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Mental Health Issues, POV Jared, Pining, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 23:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15896652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirkne/pseuds/Cirkne
Summary: If he’s to fold himself into what he’s supposed to be, if he’s to turn his body into paper, his angles into bends, if he’s to become an origami crane, he might be allowed to stay longer.





	but if we're good, and if we wait

i.

He can hardly hold himself together like this. Overcome with longing. Richard sits, in one of his many sweaters, at the kitchen table and all Jared can think about is touching him. Running his hand down Richard’s sleeve, his fingers on the soft light yellow material. He thinks if he had to give Richard a color he’d be the color of sand. He’d be a sunset at a beach, he’d be coffee with too much milk. He’d be the curtains in the first apartment Jared lived in. He’d be sun spots on a hardwood floor. 

Jared thinks, often, how easily Richard would crumble under his touch, how he’d turn to primrose petals in Jared’s hands, how he’d melt into it like no one has ever wanted to touch him before. Maybe Jared’s projecting a little, but there’s something about Richard. About the way he sits and moves, how he folds into himself like no touch has ever been pure before. Like there’s always been something else that people wanted and touch starved, eager to give Richard has never felt like he’s been enough by just existing. He’s always had something to prove. 

The very top of the world, when reached, will not be enough for Richard Hendricks.

So his sweater is yellow. So he’s coding at the kitchen table while what Jared assumes are leftovers heat in the microwave. So he looks soft and raw, in a way that Jared should have gotten used to by now. His eyebrows furrowed in concentration, his lips pressed together, one of his feet resting on the chair, his chin almost on his knee as he leans in closer to the screen. Jared can’t help but be mesmerized. _This_ is how it happens. This is how Richard will change the world. Sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a sweater that makes Jared’s chest ache. He imagines putting his hands on Richard’s shoulders. His fingers working out the knots in his back and Richard would let him, would continue to code as if Jared wasn’t even there. How sad it is that in his most secret fantasies, he just wants Richard to ignore him. To continue on as if Jared having permission to love him isn’t a change in their relationship but a natural progression. 

Jared breathes out. He has not moved from the doorway yet. That’s what this really is. He dares not dream of Richard loving him back but hopes that one day he will be allowed to have his own feelings without the shame that comes with them.

“Jared,” Richard says without turning to look at him. “You’re allowed in the kitchen,” it sounds both like it’s a joke and like he’s being sincere. 

Jared counts to five and then walks to the sink to wash his hands. 

ii.

Richard hears the first few seconds of a song playing on the radio in Jared’s car and turns the volume up. Jared wants to pull over. He wants to turn his entire body to Richard, limbs digging into the corners inside his car, and ask what he likes about this song. Ask what he used to listen to when he was a kid. He wants to make him a playlist of songs he likes and see if any of them stick. He wants to tell him, because he’s never told this to anyone before, that his favorite song reminds him of one of the first foster parents he had and that he barely remembers anything about her, just that she played the song when he first moved in with her and that back then he thought his life was getting better. 

He doesn’t do any of that, of course. He continues driving. Richard hums along to the song the entire time and turns the volume down as soon as it ends. Jared wants to ask if Richard knows he’s humming but he’s too busy trying to commit the song to memory so he could look it up later to say anything. And somewhere between his clavicles it settles that this is not a happy song. It feels like a gift in a sort of selfish way.

See: Richard doesn’t do that, doesn’t like background music. He’s either playing it way too loud in his headphones or he’s not listening to it at all. Turns the radio off when he wants to talk because it’s distracting. He skips the songs Jared tells him to skip and leaves the ones he asks to leave. He never has opinions on them, he barely even reacts when they change. 

Out of the corner of his eye Jared can see Richard rest his head against the car door, close his eyes. This morning, Jared noticed a new bruise on his arm. He’s clumsy. He’s unaware of how hard it is becoming for Jared to focus because yes, he prides himself in being observant, in noticing how Richard and everything around him shifts but this is something he’s being given. His palms, out for anything and Richard, voice like silk, reaching into his own chest and pulling out a melody, his fingers wrapped around it like a cage around his heart, dripping what looks like purple blood. _Royalty,_ his mind supplies but he doubts that can be it. 

“Did I take my tie?” Richard asks suddenly, brings Jared back to the reality of driving to a business meeting. His eyes open, looking at Jared with a slightly panicked expression. What he’s asking is _Did you take my tie for me_. Jared craves blueberries. Jared doesn’t turn to look at Richard but thinks about painting his lips. “Jared,” Richard tries again. “Did I take my tie?”

“It’s in my bag,” Jared manages. Richard‘s eyes fall closed again. None of the other songs that play on their way there and then on their way back draw any reaction out of Richard.

iii.

Richard, if asked, would either say that he doesn’t have a favorite color or think so long about it that by the time he gave you an answer you would have forgotten the question. 

His favorite color, from what Jared has gathered, is most likely green. Not the green of Pied Piper, though it must mean a lot to him too, but a green much kinder to the eye. A softer, quieter shade, a color that, if looked at in the wrong light, would almost look blue. 

The way Jared thinks about it is this: a favorite color such as blue is a safe choice. There are no wrong shades. You take the numbers of hue and saturation and light and arrange them how you see fit and you are still left with something appealing, something so kind when you look at it. It is easy to love a color as deep as the ocean, as endless as the sky. There are many wrong shades of green, though. Too loud. Too bright. Green gets into your skin, green wraps around your skull. Green exists to overwhelm and overpower but when the numbers fall into place just right, you are left with something wonderful. If you know where to look, you find something extraordinary. There’s poetry in that. There’s poetry in code, in seeing how something will fall together before it has, there’s poetry in building empires on symbols. Poetry in loving green.

Poetry in everything Richard does or doesn’t do. 

It’s always the same: he finds someone brilliant, someone born to do great and the ground underneath his feet ruptures until he’s neck deep in a lake as dark as the night sky. He’s consumed before he even learns their middle name. He makes his insides into fruit, he keeps his hands warm just in case, he wants to feed them parts of himself until they can no longer tell where the Jared that doesn’t belong to them begins. Sometimes they sink their teeth into him, sometimes they don’t. Give or take a relationship in the mess of things. The part where they never learn to love him back doesn’t change. 

Richard has not yet caught up to the fact that they have never been equals. He needs to learn to distinguish between employees and friends. He loses parts of himself to sleep deprivation and thinks that they will be handed back to him. He looks at the devotion laid at his feet and mistakes it for friendship. 

“Jared,” he says over the phone, it’s a little past three in the morning. Jared’s just woken up so he doesn’t know if the hitch in Richard’s voice is something he should be worried about “How can you watch this movie?”

“Movie?” Jared echoes, sits up in his bed, considers turning on the lamp on the nightstand but decides to give his eyes just a few more moments of the soothing dark.

“Oh. I-” Richard stumbles. “Dead poets society. Were you- were you sleeping?”

He’s far too tired to feel it now but in the morning he’ll realize that Richard watched it, if sort of subconsciously, for him and flowers will bloom in his chest.

“It’s a wonderful film, Richard, really, it gets easier after you’ve watched it a couple times.”

“A couple- Jesus, Jared I couldn’t even-” and he pauses, then, breathes out. Over the phone it’s hard to tell if he’s stopped talking or if he’s looking for what to say next. Jared decides to wait for him, lifts his knees to his chest to rest his arms on them while he does. “You don’t have to pick up if you’re sleeping.”

He wants to tell him that he does because this could have been important but the implication that it isn’t would not sit well with Richard.

“Of course I do, Richard, I work for you,” he answers instead and hopes it satisfies him. Richard stays silent for so long Jared has to check the line hasn’t gone dead. Eventually, he says:

“Go back to sleep, Jared,” and hangs up before Jared can say anything else. 

iv.

If he’s to fold himself into what he’s supposed to be, if he’s to turn his body into paper, his angles into bends, if he’s to become an origami crane, he might be allowed to stay longer. 

He’s learned everything he needs to do to be of help and then-

Then Richard locks him out. He’s never done that before. He’s never had the piece of mind, as he’s about to vomit, to turn the lock on the bathroom door and also, Jared thinks, in an empty sort of hopeful way, that he likes someone- _Jared_ coming after him. That as much as he hates being seen this vulnerable, he needs someone to care about him. 

So why now? What has Jared done to upset him? To be told, if not in words, that he is not needed?

He stands by the bathroom door just in case and pictures Richard with his knees on the tiles. This new found independence of Richard has his own heart feeling like it is going to break his ribs. He needs to be needed because as soon as he’s not he stops being a follower and turns to a burden. If Richard decides to lock him out more than this once, he will morph from a member of the crew to cargo, weighing down their ship until they find where to get rid of him. 

Behind the door, Richard has stopped retching. So he’s shaking. So he’s holding onto the light pink of the toilet, his eyes prickling with tears. Jared has memorized it. He knows where to keep his hands, when to move, what to say. He thinks Erlich’s color palette is fitting. Thinks that pink is the color of panic, of fear. He thinks that, if held firmly, Richard would stop shaking. He hasn’t tried and now he doubts he’ll ever will. He’s been pushed backwards. 

He wonders where he’ll go when Richard kicks him out. He can hear water running in the sink. He wants to knock, carefully, on the door and ask if he can come in. He wants to run his fingers through Richard’s hair. He wants to prove that he could still be useful. He wants to mold himself into whatever Richard would fight to keep. 

He fears, of course, of having become too much for Richard. Everything he does now determines how long he has left. He is stuck here, the consequences of every choice he can make becoming too much for him. 

Richard unlocks and opens the door. He looks pale, his hands are fidgeting.

“Jared,” he says, an acknowledgement of his presence before it is anything else. He’s not looking at him. His collar needs fixing. 

“Richard,” Jared answers but he doesn’t sound like he’s really there. He’s a mediocre impression of himself. “Do you need anything?”

“You don’t have to- You’re not a babysitter, Jared,” there’s something there. Himalayan salt in his voice, in the air, in his eyes trained somewhere behind Jared.

“Of course not, Richard,” and it’s instinct, the way Jared jumps to comfort him, to find whatever he has coded into his words and untangle it until he knows the problem so well he can fix it. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Richard looks at him. Something, something in the blue of his gaze. Sharp rocks at the very bottom of the ocean. Richard looks away and, cold, detached, quiet, goes:

“I don’t pay you to look after me,” sakura petals and- almost like he’s trying to get Jared to remember something. Hidden in his tone, in his stance. 

“I’m not sure I understand,” is looking after Richard not something that he has earned by now? Has he not worked to stand next to him, be it company or his own time? “Have I done something to upset you, Richard?”

A pause. Another look. His insides twisting into ribbons. He thinks, vaguely, _My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still_ and then he blinks, untangles the knots in Richard’s words. 

His own voice on the other line, in the dark of the night. 

“Oh, Richard,” and he bites down on the _sweetheart_ that climbs up his throat in an attempt to follow “I didn’t mean that my devotion was strictly business.” 

“No?” Richard, his wonderful Richard, so sweet when so unsure of himself as if not holding the world in his hands.

“I would have talked to you the entire night, had you not hung up, Richard,” he says, as sincere as he can without becoming too intense. “Even after I knew you weren’t calling because of pied piper,” _Especially then_ his mind supplies but he does not know how much honesty he is allowed. 

The pink spills out of Richard’s posture, escapes first from his shoulders, then from his limbs, falls to his feet until all that’s left is the softness of the yellow in his smile.

“Thank you, Jared,” he breathes out, which are not words that leave his lips often. Jared’s good at assuming his efforts go noticed but this- this reaches him at his very core, how naturally it leaves Richard, like he’s been holding the words on his tongue for months.

For the rest of the day he feels lighter than usual, his body, for once, being exactly what it needs to be without changing. 

v.

Richard’s the color of daffodils but Jared’s fallen for copper. In his dreams, in flashes, come soft curls and freckles and long fingers with nails bitten down to the nub. A smile, a laugh, the pale white of skin that barely sees the sun. 

His voice too quiet, his words too fast, his nervousness enveloping his body. Jared’s always loved autumn. It’s never easier to breathe than it is surrounded by warm colors and his fingers wrapped around a paper cup of coffee and the sound of rain as gentle as the bedtime stories his mother would tell him when he was four. 

So Richard’s yellow but everything Jared feels for him is red and brown and orange. So he loses himself in pigment. So he closes his eyes and only sees one face. So everything else that came before Richard has started to blur at the very edges. 

He knows himself best in devotion, yes, in opening himself bare. He thinks loving someone and belonging to them completely can never be separate. Not for him, at least. He thinks he was made to be owned, to never be his own person. He thinks being on his knees suits him better than standing on his feet. He thinks praying to a lover is as pure as it is divine. He thinks the word _lover_ is too generous for him. He’s a pass time, he’s guilt, he’s called when there’s no one better. His name is synonymous with desperation. 

“Jared,” Richard says. Careful. Too careful. When will he catch on? When will he look at Jared and finally see what he’s become? He never needs to ask. He never needs to be this cautious and yet his hand hovers just above Jared’s as if Jared would refuse his touch. 

“Yes,” Jared replies though he doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to or if Richard wants him to agree to anything at all. He takes his hand then and he pulls, just slightly and when Jared doesn’t move he says:

“Jared, I need you to come with me,” and his voice sounds like strawberries, like apples, like bell peppers. His touch is warm. His eyes are big and blue and _hopeful_ maybe, or afraid, it’s hard to tell with him. So Jared goes. So Jared follows like he’s supposed to and Richard leads him to his room and doesn’t let go of his hand the entire time. 

Jared registers when Richard sits him down but doesn’t realize it’s on the floor until he’s sitting in front him, running his fingers up his hand, flipping it to touch the inside of his wrist. And then Richard shifts and lifts himself, just a little, so they’re eye level, so he’s so close Jared can almost feel his breath on his face.

He’s looking at him and Jared is looking back, searching until he finally realizes why he feels like his body isn’t his, why he’s floating, suddenly. He realizes what Richard said just minutes ago, realizes how he’s made the whole house feel like autumn and copper and how Jared wants, more than anything, to trace the freckles on his shoulders with his fingers. Not the ones on his face, no, he wants his lips on them before anything. 

“Jared,” Richard says. Soft, so soft, all gemstones, all fire agate and ruby, all wine and blood and cherry. And he’s a mess, yes, he stumbles over his words more than anyone else Jared has ever met but he also- he sings, he sings in tones of honey and gold, in lemon juice. He knows exactly when to take control. He says- no, he repeats, Jared realizes. _Repeats:_ “I’m in love with you,” and oh Jared has forgotten how to breathe. And then, of course, of course, so insecure, so small, so unaware of how important he is, he adds: “Is that okay?” and it snaps Jared back, full force, like rocks weighing him down.

“Yes,” he says and now he knows, he knows what Richard needs confirmation for. He says: “I’m in love with you too, Richard,” and oh what a wonder it is to not have said it first, to have given his confession as an answer, as reassurance. He’s never gotten to see the shore before but now, now-

Now the shore is full of sand, of course, and Richard stands on it, arms reaching out and waiting for Jared to swim to him, his feet in grands of what he himself has become. Or has always been. It’s strange. It’s overcoming him again but this time Richard’s hands are on him, running up to his shoulders and his neck and his face and his hair and Jared thinks of that light yellow sweater of Richard’s and then Richard is leaning in and he thinks _oh_ and catches him midway, lips soft against each other. Richard’s hands soft, Richard’s chest bubbling with laughter as they pull away and Jared, holding him as close as he can, pulling him into his lap. Oh this is it, this is it, Richard is holding onto him like Jared is the one allowed to fall apart, like Richard will gather every piece of him and keep him safe.

He says it again, later, his lips a flutter against Jared’s shoulder.

“I’m in love with you,” like he’s reminding both of them, like showing it is not enough, like he wants to carve it into the walls and his own skin, like he’s sunshine, sunshine, sunshine.

**Author's Note:**

> title from like dogs by pegasus bridge which is 100% a jared song 
> 
> the song richard likes is to ribbons by stepdad or whatever song u think fits 
> 
> im @ safebird on tumblr and @ tadaffodil on twitter if you would like to talk about silicon valley


End file.
